Does Lean work on a construction site?

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Pat,
Certainly 5S would be in improvement. Lean/TPS is a process of continuous improvement, isn't it? I think the general jobsite is further behind the times organizationally than a good shop, but no less able to begin the process of lean. Someone would have to be very motivated to make that happen, and I have not seen many (0, perhaps 1) builders who have that kind of vision.

I have thought for years, the right builder with the right vision, able to attract vendors like us to the team, could do wonders in this area. And the quality, speed, of the projects, and the profitability of the companies working those projects could improve dramatically!

We were doing a major retailers rollouts a few years ago, their lean/JIT program was all owner supplied items were onsite in containers prior to start of construction.

The company we were working with lost the contract because the metal fabricator from China wasn't on time for two seasons yet everything was in the parking lot before they needed it.

We are doing a few projects now that are using pull planning.

The first one required a full day meeting before the project started

Hello Everyone,

We will be holding our Pull Plan meeting XXX at ABC. It will start at 7am and will go till the end of the working day.

This will give us all an opportunity to work alongside one another to be as efficient during this project as possible. Please set time aside for the project lead and the foreman who will be involved in this job to attend the meeting.

If there are questions of scope please refer to xxxx which has the specs and drawings.

Pat, I am sure Lean can work on a construction site to some extent. It may improve standardization and efficiency of activities, human aspects (communication, coordination and mutual respect among people), waste reduction, etc. But, takt time, line balancing, heijunka, etc are not much relevant to work on construction sites. What Lean is unable to do includes project scheduling with optimal allocation of resources to activities, prediction of work progress, what-if analysis of work flow, capacity planning, etc. Proper project scheduling is superior to kanban-based real-time control of work. I have not seen in Lean the concept of prediction and what-if analysis of work flow. There is some limitation on the export of methodology developed on a production line (with stable demand) to construction sites.

Pat, our scheduling tool, Schedlyzer is not implemented on construction sites. It is more appropriate for resource-constrained scheduling of project-oriented production like metal/wood fabrication, architectural millwork, custom wood working, etc.

Absolutely, lean can be implemented on a construction site. The payoffs are larger and more obvious than in a manufacturing business.

The basics are all there.

Materials on the site a couple of days before required. The I-joists are closest to the building not buried. Then the subfloor,etc. Shortest walking distances but not restricting work areas and the general pathway. No double handling.

The subs come in on time as needed. The last 5% of each phase is completed. No calling the electrician or plumber back for 2hrs, because they forgot to run one line before the carpenters bury it.

In a busy construction phase, material supply alone can drag down a project. Nothing flows.Typically it is a poor management problem, than being a true supply problem.

Communication between the customer, builder, subs, and distributors is key. The questions need to be answered. No bs, no maybe. Yes or no.

Money needs to flow.

Learn from every mistake or success. The builder needs to listen to everyone involved. Accurate job costing is required to see the gains and losses.

I find it strange that a subcontractor would ask if lean works on a job site.

Lean started with Toyota. In my mind it is simple intelligent assembly line. People have been using different explanations or similar implementations for decades.

Building tract houses might be a good example in construction. Building lots of the same cars/houses side by side.

I don't think of building houses as batch. You've got materials coming on time. They are fabricated into mostly one off objects. Sure you could say studs are all the same. Smart builders simply buy precuts. They are then a material. The rest of the wall is a one off.

I used to have an article I photo copied from someone elses issue of Fine Homebuilding (published in the 1970's).

It was an awesome article about how he happed to start framing a home at the same time someone else starting framing across the street. He was done MUCH sooner, and went into his building mentality, and how it was the reason behind his productivity. Today his techniques could be called lean, but when i first read it, it just made sense. Though it all still applies, I doubt many follow the practice.

I can't recall too many of the tips, but some were simple principles, like plan so you never have to move material more than once. He would work with the supply houses to make sure things came off the truck in the order they would be used. If he had multiple studs to cut to length, he would set his saw to the right depth, then cut them all on the pile at once. story sticks helped mark openings, etc, etc. I wish I still had that article!

Ill tell you his answer. YES.
search you tube for Paul Akers Kazakhstan, paul consults to the BI group, a multi billion dollar construction company that have thousands of projects going on. The owner of the company is all in on lean and they are making huge changes in there peiple and production, from road building to apartment projects. Yes lean can be implemented on the jobsite.
Kazakhstan: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLROkf9gKrj_4iMOtUgbkyM1DVkAiRNGr6

And having materials on sight days ahead is not lean. Having materials on site when they are needed is lean.

To my observation, the biggest challenge with lean on a construction site is weather. If you can find a way to continue without interruption apart from weather, a construction site is nothing more than a large work cell. Not saying it would be simple or easy (nor is it in a factory), but possible? Yes.

Speaking from the position of a builder and shop guy. Pat you can call lean what ever you want. The methods we use on a job site are the same as the original version of lean.

As I noted before, you guys like to tweek and adulterate "lean" as we know it. I honestly do not have the time to go through the literature which pertains to the current thinking on lean.

Describe your version of lean point by point and I will check those boxes which pertain to a jobsite.

Yes, weather is a variable that is out of my control. However, that is one variable. If the power shut off in your shop for a couple of days would you throw lean in the bin? No you do the same thing as yesterday with handsaws and a hammer.

In Taichi Ohno's memoirs he described Lean as simply being the process of reducing the time period between when we make the sale and when we collect the money.

I don't know anything at all about commercial construction. I am, however, a Subject Matter Expert on all the issues, processes and nuances of residential construction. I am particularly adept at the Retail-Direct market, both in remodel and new construction.

I spent fifteen years working at the top of the food chain projects where money was unlimited. My role during that time period was similar to that of Winston Wolf in Pulp Fiction. My job was to identify the snakes, kill them and present a viable alternative in a way that didn't make the architect look stupid.

I was here for the very first kitchen that had theater as it's primary focus. My typical customer back in the day owned four houses in three countries.
My current customer today is what we used to call "school teacher" kitchens. These people may now work for the tech sector but they still have to report for work each Monday.

In my opinion the biggest opportunity for reducing the time period between when you make the sale and collect the money has to do with communication systems.

We have computers today but most communication is handled with analog systems. Most job sites are not much farther ahead than we were in the days of the civil war. At least back then they had a drummer boy who could lay down a tattoo to let everybody to close up ranks. At least that method was efficient. It was low in cost and everybody got the same memo at the same time. Today our communication systems are more like Lewis & Clark stacking up a pile of rocks to signal to the next guy you went north. This method works as long as the guy following you can find that rock pile and can properly interpret it's intent.

The root cause of this problem is ambivalence on the part of the various players. There are too many people involved whose pay is not tied to the outcome. Paraphrasing Taichi Ohno, "In order for a worker to create a list of processes that is useful to his co-workers he must first be convinced of it's importance." If you can fix that problem most of the other ones will go away.

It is done by good builders and project managers. The best guys I work for in Connecticut run (2) 2-5 million jobs simultaneously with at least another one in development stage. That's with two guys in the office and one full time onsite project manger for two sites.

Its like an orchestra. Everything is there on time. The decisions are made. The subs always like me get their stuff done on times. If it takes weekends and overtime so be it.

I've also witnessed things like the video. The old school Cali framers are amazing to watch. Check out those you tube vids.

The tract houses may be garbage, but the really good buiders organize the hell out the them. Not much wasted time or material. The bottlenecks(lean) or lack of flow(lean) would take all of their profit.

The old argument of is lean just being smart thinking is valid. Back in the day Toyota was being pretty smart; however, Ford and GM were being lazy and stupid.

Most of us have witnessed really good builders and most are average to poor. Makes a huge difference.

For the most part manufacturing does still have this problem. At least it does in most of the shops in our industry.

I would guess that my company has so much low hanging fruit we could still lower our costs by half. Most of the cost reduction will be found in labor minutes. Decreasing labor minutes is like increasing capacity. If you can get done by Thursday what used to take until Friday you get an extra three months of production out of each year.

The retailer would build 400 stores internationally in the spring and 400 in the fall. The retailer supplied all the fixtures, trim, fabrics, carpets, lighting, celling tiles, all bought on national or international contracts.

The challenges they had were they would sign or intend to sign lease agreements sometimes after orders were placed, stores would have all the usual scheduling issues from permits to unknown site conditions to weather.

The retailers concern was that the GC was never held up for lack of materials (back charges) and could modify the schedule to meet the deadline by moving when different areas were ready based on site conditions.

The fixtures we built had to match the ones made on the east coast and had to match the ones made in Europe. If a lease fell through or a store got added somewhere else the containers could be moved anywhere in the world or held in storage for the next rollout.

I imagine the costs of back charges based on the owners subs not performing were greater than the cost of having material on hand for the GC to pick from as soon as he was ready. It also would eliminate the GC's ability to say they were late because owners x held us up.

I imagine one of the objectives was to open x weeks after start and let the registers start ringing generating cash flow as soon as possible. A 3-4 week delay could be anywhere from 120 to 500 k in revenue.

If a 1 week delay was a 50k loss of revenue and every store was 1 week late, that's 20 Million in lost revenue across 400 stores ( if every store was 1 week late).

I heard that about 70% of Lean implementations in manufacturing are failures. The blame usually goes to top management for not providing full support but it does not go to Lean hype, consultant or workers involved at all.

In my opinion, introduction of Lean will be beneficial where people:

Do not have a serious desire for improvement
Do not have discipline and good working culture
Do not have good communication
Do not use much commonsense
Do not observe the system keenly and look for improvement opportunities.

As I recall, most of your background is in commercial work. Residential is, I imagine, a much different beast. As DS can attest, it is not uncommon for a lot of contractors in our marketplace to spend six months remodeling a bathroom. These guys puff out their chest and show everybody their color coded three ring binders filled with Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. Never mind that they are using flat file architecture to manage projects while everybody else is using dynamic database)

The attached picture shows a 5500 square foot house we built cabinets for a couple of years ago. This was no slouch house. It had butler's pantries, box beams, wainscot billiards room and heated exterior porches. It's hard to tell in the pic but all the bay windows have sloping eyebrow shake roofs.

The construction of this house was GC'd by the owner. She held down a full time job while mothering two toddler children. It took exactly 365 days from when the bullldozer showed up to demolish her old house and when she had occupancy permit for the new one.

The method she used for management was to simply create a list of every single activity that had to occur in every single room. She queried each list each day to ask in a Yes or No format "Can this step be happen now?" She then proceeded, to the extent possible, to staff every activity that had a YES answer.

She didn't have a lot of clout in the marketplace. She was dealing with the usual suspects you might find in residential construction. For the most part these were small shops like my own.

In true Toyota fashion, along the way she kept a journal of all the creative excuses guys would give her as to why they couldn't show up to do their job today. She could use that list to say "Nope, grandma died last April" or "Nope, you already ran into the deer on the way to the ferry dock". She figured there was a novel somewhere in the future in those excuses.

So if a housewife with two babies and a full time job can build this quality of construction in 365 days, why does it take six months for a GC to do a simple bathroom?

She designed computer chips for a living. Her job was to organize the flow of electricity through the chip itself.

One project she was working on at the time was how to optimize stoplights for various scenarios. If, for example, the Mariners were playing a baseball game on the same day the Seahawks had a football game how should the stoplights be sequenced if there was a fire at 3rd & Union and you needed to get a firetruck through the city without stopping at any lights. Similar optimization to what Prasad talks about but managing the flow of electricity through the chips that drive the stoplights.

To her it this was completely binary.

In the Toyota Lean system questions need to be framed so that the answer is either yes or no. If you can't end of up with one of those answers then you need to reframe the question until you do.

Part of this optimization has to do with minimizing latency. The fewer rabbit holes you go down the less resources you expend. Smaller packets of information that have to flow to and from the server means you can redraw just what is needed where it is needed when it is needed.

Paul I asked this question on the woodweb: Does Lean work on a construction site

Paul Akers
Reply to Pat

Pat too difficult a question to answer an email if you get me on Voxer I can do it.

In a nutshell there are 40,000 different parts in a car Toyota makes a different car or mixed products on the same production line different colors different models different accessories the idea of everything having to be predictable is ridiculous.

Thanks
Paul

PS.....Please excuse the typo‘s I did everything with Siri

PPS..... you can listen to it and download any of my books for free here are the links.

In this case rather than locally styling a font to be Helvetica 12 point Bold Italic Blue you merely call it Heading 2. The attributes for H2 text are stored locally on the website so this means fewer trips back and forth to the server to describe the text.
It's essentially smaller packets of information much like smaller batch sizes of operation.

As Paul pointed out the Toyota factories will build a red sedan in front of a blue pickup in front of two green convertibles. They don't organize the line to build pickups in the afternoon and cabriolet in the morning. They process the orders as they come in and they have no control over what any given customer will order at any given time. (Similar to how my customer has no way of knowing whether or not her drywall guy will run into a deer on his way to the ferry)

You obviously need to have systems to support the transfer of information. In some cases Toyota uses a computer screen in some cases they use a colored clothes pin. If you are in charge of pulling seatbelt combinations for various vehicles (pickup trucks require 3, sedans require 5) you keep pulling green until you see a blue clothespin.

On a job site, for example, you make sure the framers focus first on the walls that will affect plumbing. Your goal isn't to keep the framers working efficiently. Your goal is to get the plumbing in place so the wiring can get started.

You obviously want to do this in as low a cost as possible. Numbering the windows on the plan set makes it easier to correlate windows with the window order and sequence the framing of headers that affect plumbing paths.

Numbering Questions makes it easier to verify Question 23 got answered. If the window is numbered it is easier to verify if this is one of the windows you are still waiting to decide on. If you need to change the order it is easier to find it on the order manifest.

You could also use the dumbass method and call it kid's bedroom window but then you would need to ask which kid and which wall. If you can control which windows get set first you can start your siding sooner. Let to develop their own strategy the guys who install windows will install all the windows on the first floor before they install any window on the second floor. The siding guys, however only care about the north side of the house because there is still trench work happening on the east side.

This involves choreography more so than predictability.

Drawings printed out on colored sheets of paper, colored by trade (or priority) are much better than rolled up blueprints that need to be pawed through.

Remodeling a bathroom, for example, consists of fairly specific set of possible operations.

The universe of possible operations is sort of like all the ingredients on the shelf at your favorite grocery store. If you want to make lasagna you walk down the aisle and pull lasagna specific ingredients into your cart. In this case you don't pull too much chocolate but you do pull olives and tomato sauce etc. If you are making a desert you might pull sugar and chocolate but the quantities and type would depend on whether this was a chocolate cake or chocolate brownies.

There are nuances to everything.

You need to remove the old medicine chest. Whether or not you put this medicine chest in the dumpster or in the garage depends on whether or not your customer is going to replace or reuse the medicine chest. The same thing goes for window casings, towel bars etc.

You need a mechanism to ensure that all the constituents to this decision get the memo. If they fail to save the medicine chest then you will need to figure out how to replace it. If they fail to save the window latch you will find yourself driving around town asking people if they know where to get a matching latch.

The towel bar can be heated or not heated. The towel bar needs a general location and a specific height and probably would benefit from some blocking in the wall.

It used to be we had Mexicans available to do some of the demolition work. Fortunately we no longer need to contend with the language barrier so making sure they understand not to throw out the old medicine chest has been simplified. If you can get all your workers to speak the same language then you have better opportunities for standardization of your lists. This will help subsidize the higher costs of construction associated with embracing people of different cultures.

This is a tedious list to produce...........the first time. It is, however, like amortizing the cost of a new tool. My new 4' stabila level cost me $83 the first time I used it. The second time we brought it to a job site it cost $41.50. I think it is now down to about $4 per jobsite. The initial cost of acquiring this resource was high but over time made us much more efficient when measuring jobsites.

Sending your crew out with an iPad and a database list can help ensure they remember to measure the smallest doorway into a building. If that is a red category item then they can't leave the job site until this value has been input into the system.

The alternative is to rely on powers of observation or brute memory. Now you got to ask the lady where she wants her towel bar while she is on the way to the airport. And then you got to rely on the answer she gave you while she was unfocused and did not understand the question.

There are a couple of reasons why she (computer analyst) got it done in 12 months.
1. Its her house/project. Every extra day will cost in some regard for not moving into her new house
2. She's smart and her real job makes theoretical project management look easy.
3. The money. Good owner builders are a pleasure to work for. They appreciate your craftsman ship. They pay immediately.
4.Its a 2-way decision making process. They often know what they want or will allow you to guide them.

There are a couple of reasons why the contractor takes 6 months to do a bathroom.
1. Its not his house. He doesn't care when its done.
2. The contractor may be smart or not.
3. money: the good the bad and the ugly
4. Communication is a 3 way pain the ass.

I'm doing the owner/builder thing on my own house. All of the subs know each other or they know of me. They know I have reasonable standards for things like earth moving/foundations. One of the most motivating tools I have is money. I explain to them up front that I will pay them the day they bill me if we both agree on the work.
The money all comes out of my construction loan, so it doesn't matter to me when I pay them. They get it done.

I like to think of what we all do as multi variable problem solving. The fundamental key is to identify the limiting factor. That is what she was doing everyday.

Cabmaker said, "Toyota factories will build a red sedan in front of a blue pickup in front of two green convertibles. They don't organize the line to build pickups in the afternoon and cabriolet in the morning. They process the orders as they come in and they have no control over what any given customer will order at any given time."

This is not the concept I have about Toyota production lines until now. I am not sure that Toyota production is order-driven, that is, Toyota delivers products by specific due dates of orders as many woodworking shops do. I guess Toyota gets its orders from dealers who maintain huge inventories. If I want from a dealer a Toyota Camry LE which is out of stock, then he will try to sell me a Camry SE or even Camry XLE, with some discount if necessary.

Toyota can indirectly exploit the dealer business and inventories to simplify its production planning.

I don't know whether Toyota works with specific due dates of customer (dealer) orders? I guess Toyota assumes stable demand for its products.

This contradicts much of Cabmaker's statement. Apparently they are having trouble working the Toyota lean magic on one car model built in one factory in the US.

What's the limiting factor in that equation?

I don't know much about the big car lines. Whenever they get mentioned in the news. Its usually this company opened or moved a factory that produces this single model to asecond world nation or a southern State in the US that apparently needs no tax income.

Pat,

I found you on star search. I'll keep looking for the Cali flic. Bit busy with my house.

A construction site can be lean Like everyone else, it starts at the top

I think Toyota has a way of dehumanizing the work flow or actually benefits from the Japanese culture in their never being quest

I work with a lot of general contractors. They commit the deadliest sin of all, poor planning. Then they throw profits from another job to subsidize the current.

Lazy and poor habits. It starts at the top. And, it really boils down to poor on site supervision. Just witnessed poor truss placement and today they are tearing them off one by one and then resetting them 6 guys total and the crane operator. Nice expense

I wonder what Toyota's system would look like if every car was a custom one of a kind, if every car was engineered by a different designer, if every designer was trying new ideas and using materials in order to make a name for themselves, if every car owner was intimately involved in every process and had the freedom to make changes at will, if the cars were built outdoors in all kinds of weather and built not by well trained employees and programmed robots but by independant contractors who are juggling 10 other custom cars at the same time each with their own eccentric designers and unrealistic homeowners?

I wonder if we'd call the superintendent running those projects lazy and disorganized.

Lean is for predictable, repeatable products. It is not for custom luxury homes or custom luxury cabinet manufacturers. There are much better systems and much better philosophy's for these kinds of trades, and I see them in use every day by intelligent hardworking people. Lean is a terrific philosophy, but it is a square peg meant for square holes. Custom homes and custom cabinets are round holes. Find the round peg, it fits better.

Every industry has sea changes.
In your & my career we've seen a half dozen at least. This doesn't count major swings in the economy. Those are just periodic nuances within those sea changes.

Take lumber (and or real estate) availability. It used to be when you bought some cherry lumber it likely as not came from a 200 acre woodlot owned by a guy who came back from world war two. The logs were pretty consistent quality and reasonably priced. Today that same forest is owned by a family trust. Every tree has a GPS device tied to it and a barcode link to the spot market.

It's hard to get good veneer today because sanding technology has gotten so precise. The veneers are so thin now that when you put finish on them they become translucent like a wet T-shirt albeit not a good way. Worldwide demand for that log has changed. We have the internet now and the rest of the world does not want to ride bicycles anymore.

It used to be you could buy a small building in town from a guy who was getting ready to retire. If that same small building even exists any more it is part of a six property parcel that's also owned by a family trust or a WallStreet REIT.

There is still, however, a lot of very low hanging fruit. As Chordal wrote in 1880: The "smart" mechanic has prosperity available to him that lords of earlier centuries never dared to dream of.

This part hasn't gone away.
Paraphrasing another very wise man: "Hydrogen is not the building block of the universe. Dumb is the building block of the universe. There is more dumb than hydrogen out there".

The contractors all compete in the same soup. You can have a 30 year career in the construction industry, both in management & in the field, without actually sitting through 30 minutes of formal training on any topic you engage with.

The picture of the house I posted was built in 365 days by a woman who had no clout in the marketplace. She did not have a stable of reliable subcontractors that she'd worked with for many years. She merely made a list.

We hate lists in our industry.
Lists are boring.

You can't even get a plumber to clean out the back of his truck. How are you going to get Peter Pan to do anything that might bore him.

We have refined paint grade work processes to where every stick of lumber that comes into the building is a winner.

You don't need to be a seasoned woodworker to produce a straight, flat stave of lumber in my shop. Most of our projects are flush inset work with fully mortised butt hinges. We need a very flat cabinet door to pull this off. We have the ability to make a flat door.

Lists help you create that semblance of organizations. Every single time we create a list we end up with process improvement. The last time we made a list for training in the drawer box department we created five process improvements, three of which were very significant. The drawer box itself has not changed in appearance in over 15 years yet the process improvements were hidden by (lack of) a list.

We solved the contractor problem by selling all of our work directly to homeowners. Contractors are un-inspirable. Homeowners stay up till midnight in their pajamas pouring over Pinterest.

I agree with R. Don's views on Lean for custom production. In my honest opinion, Lean is quite helpful but inadequate for efficient management of custom production with stringent due dates for orders. Production management is difficult in custom manufacturing units because custom products usually have different process and resource requirements and specific, stringent due dates for individual orders and it uses limited multi-functional machines and multi-skilled workers across various products. Custom production is drastically different from Toyota production "lines" which make a few, somewhat similar products one after another to meet presumably stable demands.

The link given below shows a few types of production systems and discusses the complexity of job shop production. It is my presentation material at FABTECH 2017 Show.

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The editors, writers, and staff at WOODWEB try to promote safe practices.
What is safe for one woodworker under certain conditions may not be safe
for others in different circumstances. Readers should undertake the use
of materials and methods discussed at WOODWEB after considerate evaluation,
and at their own risk.